Despite huge repair costs, Schenectady can’t afford to buy police cars more often and rotate old ones out before they begin to fall apart. Still, Mayor Gary McCarthy is pushing to replace cars as soon as possible, and the City Council will vote on the first eight cars today. If approved, the new cars will replace cars that are 3 and 4 years old. The expenses for 4-year-old cars can be staggering. This year, the ...

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Mr Riggi is wrong on this issue. Fleet vehicles, especially police vehicles, do not have an average resale. High mileage, hard driving, long idling hours, bucket seats with a void in the middle from a console delete, holes in the interior from drilling for cages, radios, computers etc, departmental markings still appearing on the paint even after being removed, and not having a clean car fax all contribute to a very low resale/auction price. A two year replacement program is the way to go. After two years your cost per mile go up significantly.

Actually three years is the way to go because the cars will still have all of the holes and marking cfield and if you buy a Ford product you can purchase a warranty for a Police Car and it is not that expensive, certainly much less expensive than what you now pay for repairs.

And how is Mr. Riggi wrong cfield?.....He is in agreement with everything you just stated?.....did you read his statements?...Mr. Olsen...a non expert and Mr. McCarthy also a non expert in the automotive industry have no idea what they are talking about. Mr. Riggi with 50 years in the automotive industry is an expert....And Dodge Chargers?...at the beginning of the year they had to all be GM...according to McCarthy and Olson....because their mechanic was a guru with GM....Dodge's transmissions are nightmares...either listen to an expert or listen to people who are only looking for spending more money that will be more costly in the end.s

The majority of police calls I believe are domestic where seconds sometimes count. The police can't run there and they do have foot patrols when they can but again, not enough police to do the job. The SPD budget gets cut $40,000 and the Fire Dept. gets a $70,000 raise in their budget. A little backwards if you ask me.